Eight Days in The Land of Unemployed Rednecks

The great Lambert Brother Woodland Adventure came and went last week. Bob and I, along with Rick (Bob's daughter's father-in-law) picked our way across 71 miles of mud and moose scat near the end of the Appalachian Trail. We had a good time and are only a little worse for the wear. We quickly settled into a nice routine on the trail, with everyone moving along at his own pace. I was always the last one out of camp in the mornings, I'd usually hit the trail at around 7:00 after waking up around 6:00. Our daily 10 or 11 miles would take us until about 2:00 pm, depending on how steep the 10 or 11 miles were, when we'd set up camp, make some hot food, make small talk with others staying at the shelter, and then head off to bed at around 7:00.

My pack weighed 57 lbs when full of food and water. I ate only about 1/2 the food I brought with me. I know that I always find intense exercise to be an appetite suppressant, but I wasn't sure beforehand if I would find plodding though the woods intense enough to change the way I eat. Well, it was. I ate almost nothing for the first three days, and then gradually got my appetite back until on day six I was making sauteed jerkey with freeze dired veggie stew. (An aside about trail food: I happen to agree with a lot of what Michael Pollan advises here about nutrition and diet. One of his guidelines is to avoid processed foods that have more than five ingredients. Clif Bars miserably fail the Pollan five ingredient guideline. They fail so miserably that I have a hard time counting how many ingredients my favorite variety, black cherry almond, actually contain. I don't care, they're delicious and easy to carry.)

Bob had me carry a container of white fuel for the camp stove we shared. The price tag on the bottle said $17.95, which I assumed was for the bottle and the fuel. I was wrong, it was for the bottle only, the fuel costs a couple of bucks per gallon. Had I known this on day three, after it became apparent we had way too much fuel, I would have burnt it all and lightened my pack by a couple of pounds. Instead I lugged a bunch of what I though was the most expensive combustible on earth for 71 miles completely unused. Live and learn.

The trail was pretty crowded, with lots of through hikers heading in both directions. I sometimes find it difficult to interact with friends, family and others whom I legitimately care about, so I found it excruciating to share campsites with some of the nitwits we came across. Somehow northern Maine has the world's largest concentration of recently laid-off southerners. Perhaps there's a big group of idle lumberjacks in Birmingham balancing the equation. My kind-of favorite hiker to cross our path was Rebel (that's what his hat said, I didn't care enough to ask his actual name, and he was in not condition to remember it if I had), who stumbled into camp swigging whiskey from an old Gatorade bottle. Given that I went though over a gallon water every day, and we were three days away from the nearest store when we met, I can't help but admire, if nothing else, his dedication to his drink.

It was a fun trip with lots of nice scenery and plenty of time to think. We saw a baby bear cub that gracefully and effortlessly got as far away from us as he possibly could, while we did likewise, only with less grace and more effort. Thanks to Bob for putting this trip together and to Jen for spending 20 hours in a car to haul us back and forth. And of course many thanks to my wonderful wife who got more than her fill of quality time with the boys while I was away having fun. She's the best.